The chart in this post, showing that even as [the United States] makes minor reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions domestically, we are mining and drilling for ever more coal and oil and gas, seems to me crucial. It demonstrates sadly that we really haven't spent the Obama years working out a new relationship with fossil fuel, which is what we needed to do.

The WaPo also has a graph from Vaclav Smil showing the divergence of global oil prices and US natural gas prices - how much of this gap will reverse when the investment boom in shale plays fades away and the underlying economics become clear remains to be seen - Vaclav Smil’s graph of the year: The natural-gas boom.